Green Industry News

(Northport, NY) For years, as the internet and the portable technology that we use to access it have become more widespread and commonplace, the public’s reliance on older methods of acquiring information have started falling by the wayside. And there’s no instance in which this rings more true than with the print phone book industry. For years, physical phone directories have been the object of scorn for numerous reasons, be it the widespread destruction of trees for their creation, the jam-packed landfills they are quickly thrown into, or the inefficient and outdated information they contain (especially since most wireless numbers are never offered for inclusion in print directories to begin with)…just take your pick. But, despite their greater and greater irrelevance, year after year, those pesky phone books kept plopping down on everyone’s front steps every year, much to the chagrin of just about everyone who received them. As a result, a national “opt-out” movement began to take root in the collective population in an effort to curb and even outright eliminate the delivery of these unwanted tomes; interested parties could sign into various state and federal “do not deliver” registries to finally bring an end to the non-stop phone books clogging up with recycling bin. Apparently, the scorn and the sheer number of people “opting out” of print directory delivery finally amounted to the collective straw that broke the camel’s back; shockingly enough, it’s PHONE COMPANIES now that are asking government if they can stop “blanket delivering” white

(Northport, NY) On June 1, 2017, President Donald J. Trump announced during a speech at the White House Rose Garden that he would be withdrawing the United States from the Paris Climate Change Agreement, citing environmental standards imposed on American businesses and workers that he said placed undue and unfair economic strain on the country as a whole. Instead, Trump has championed the coal and oil industries, two energy sources that have long since been lambasted by clean energy experts as “outdated” and environmentally unfriendly. The move by Trump to withdraw from the Paris Climate Change Agreement agreed to by his predecessor, Barack Obama, drew immediate condemnation from world leaders and environmental activists alike, as well as numerous business and corporate leaders, many of whom noted that as a result of pulling out of the Paris Agreement – a landmark pledge among over one hundred countries worldwide to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and embrace clean, renewable energy sources – America would be taking a back seat on both environmental progress and the development of jobs in the quickly growing clean energy market. However, and surprisingly enough, almost immediately individual cities and states across the nation began to announce that they would adhere to the guidelines outlined in the Paris Agreement; within a week of Trump’s announcement, a number of local and state leaders had signed pledges declaring that they would work to meet the emission standards and other practices outlined by the Paris Agreement, according to VOA News.

(New York, NY) The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency today proposed a plan to address the sources of groundwater contamination at the Peninsula Boulevard Groundwater Plume Superfund site in Hewlett, Nassau County, N.Y. The groundwater is contaminated with tetrachloroethylene and trichloroethylene, which are chemical solvents used in dry cleaning that can harm people’s health. “This cleanup proposal for the Peninsula Boulevard site is the second phase of EPA’s ongoing efforts to clean up groundwater contamination at this Superfund site in Hewlett,” said Acting Regional Administrator, Catherine McCabe. “EPA remains committed to using the best available technology to ensure that this contamination is removed as quickly as possible and that the health of the residents of Hewlett is protected.” The Peninsula Boulevard Groundwater Plume Superfund site is an area of contaminated groundwater in Hewlett, N.Y. The site is in a densely developed neighborhood that contains multiple commercial and residential properties. Dry cleaning businesses in the area polluted the groundwater with volatile organic compounds, such as tetrachloroethylene and trichloroethylene. Residents in the area get their drinking water from the New York American Water Company, which operates a wellfield approximately 1,000 feet north of the Peninsula Boulevard site. The water delivered to area residents is a blend of water from several wellfields, including the wellfield nearest to the site. Drinking water supplies are treated to remove contaminants and monitored regularly to ensure that drinking water meets state and federal standards for protection of human health. Because of the complexity of

The Paris Climate Accord (PCA) is the world’s first comprehensive climate agreement. An agreement within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) dealing with greenhouse gases emissions mitigation, adaptation and finance starting in the year 2020, the agreement was negotiated by representatives of 195 countries at the 21st Conference of the Parties of the UNFCCC in Paris and adopted by consensus on December 12, 2015. It was later opened for signature on April 22, 2016 – Earth Day – at a ceremony in New York, with President Barack Obama one of the PCA’s most steadfast supporters. The stated goals of the PCA by the UNFCCC are as follows: Holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2 °C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels, recognizing that this would significantly reduce the risks and impacts of climate change; Increasing the ability to adapt to the adverse impacts of climate change and foster climate resilience and low greenhouse gas emissions development, in a manner that does not threaten food production; Making finance flows consistent with a pathway towards low greenhouse gas emissions and climate-resilient development.” The Paris Agreement emphasizes the principle of “Common but Differentiated Responsibility and Respective Capabilities, which is the acknowledgement that different nations have different capacities and duties to climate action. Therefore, larger, more industrialized nations that generate a greater degree of greenhouse gas will have a correspondingly larger duty to

Coal mining has been the backbone of many communities in rural America – often shaping the economies of entire town based around it – but has faced hardship in recent decades due to a lessening reliance on the combustible sedimentary rock a and tightening of environmental regulations pertaining to its procurement and disposal of its waste. To date, coal mining has been seen as something of an anachronism; a practice that is falling by the wayside as newer, cleaner, safer, and more efficient energy sources are being cultivated, such as wind, solar, and biofuel. However, many of the towns that have embraced the coal trade as the defining characteristic of their lives have been refusing to change or evolve; clinging to the hope that, one day, their wares will once again reach the same level of desirability they once had, coal miners continue to toil away amid diminishing profits in a field that is already essentially obsolete. The world is moving on, but instead of joining it, many coal miners are hoping for a reversal of progress. A light at the end of the tunnel came for many coal mining communities when Donald Trump was elected as the 45th President of the United States; a large part of Trump’s campaign centered on disenfranchised working-class Americans who, one way or another, felt passed by or abandoned by their leaders. With the promise of loosening regulations relating to coal mining, such as those governing the disposal of waste materials, many